


Origins

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Pre-Slash, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1980822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She shouldn’t worry about the draft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Origins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opusculasedfera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opusculasedfera/gifts).



> for Opusculasedfera, who is wonderful and probably given up on me. This is the absolute latest holiday present, sorry. No one should ever let me agree to write for deadlines again.
> 
> Title from the song ["Origins" by Tennis,](http://youtu.be/Qapnomk2sys) which is perfect for this story, you should go listen to it.

Sam’s small. Small breasted, small boned, a small smile that she hides behind small hands when Jenny makes her laugh. Jenny likes making Sam laugh.

Sam’s never been big. They met when they were little girls, the _only_ girls playing together on a boy’s team. Back then, Sam was absolutely tiny. They’ve both grown since then, but Sam hasn’t grown nearly as much.

At seventeen, Jenny’s nearly six feet tall. She’s gangly, not neatly compact like Sam. She has big bones, broad shoulders, wide hips. She’s never going to be delicate, and that’s good. Being big helps her play hockey with the boys. It isn’t that someone smaller couldn’t keep up, it’s that someone smaller would make the mothers and fathers and concerned adults in the crowd worry more. The concerned adults don’t want to see anyone’s daughter get hurt by a hard check. The concerned adults don’t care what anyone’s daughters want.

Jenny’s lucky, with her big bones and short hair and a skill set that mean the concerned adults let her play with the boys.

It isn’t fair. 

She shouldn’t be the only girl; she isn’t going to be the only girl; she’s just the first. 

She’s worked hard her whole life to get this good, but so have a lot of other young women. She isn’t better. She’s lucky — that she’s tall, that she’s brave, and that she has a supportive family. Her mother argued that she should get to play in the CHL, and didn’t drop it until they let her in. They couldn’t change the rules to allow just any girl in, but they could grant her “exceptional player status,” and well...

It’s a start.

Jenny doesn’t usually notice how much bigger she is than Sam, but right now she can’t see past it. She’s grown a lot this year, while she was in Oshawa and Sam was in Madison. It didn’t seem so obvious at Christmas. Jenny might have grown some since then, or maybe in December she was just too distracted by their families and the holidays and how good it felt to have her best friend back to notice.

Having her best friend back feels great now, with a whole summer ahead of them, not just a couple of days. Things are better when Sam is around, even when they aren’t doing anything special.

Hanging out is good. Hanging out is the best, even though it’s a little bit different now. They’re standing together at the sink in Sam’s bathroom, getting ready before bed. Jenny watches as Sam uses make up removing wipes to take off her mascara.

This isn’t what’s different; Sam’s always tried harder to be good at the girly stuff than Jenny has. When they were younger, before Jenny cut her hair, Sam used to make her sit still while she tried to give Jenny french braids. Jenny was never patient enough, and Sam never got good. The braids would always tangle, or come apart.

The difference is that Sam learned later, using her little sister as a model, and tonight her hair is up in an elegant half-twist-something that Jenny can’t begin to understand. Jenny got sick of boys pulling her ponytail so she got rid of it. That haircut happened in this very bathroom, when they were thirteen. Jenny was the one bold enough to hack her hair off just above the elastic, but Sam’s the one who evened it out to something that looked good enough for school on Monday. She still got called names, but they thought she was a dyke even before she cut her hair, because she played hockey and didn’t talk about boys. There wasn’t any winning with them.

That’s okay though. Jenny’s good at winning other, more important things. And she didn’t need them to be her friends, she had the boys on her team, and she had Sam. 

Sam’s enough.

She came home from her first year of college all grown up in interesting ways. She’s still Jenny’s best friend, but...it’s different. Jenny doesn’t know just how yet. But Sam’s definitely different.

Jenny’s probably pretty different too, after her year in Oshawa, but it’s harder to recognizes changes in yourself than it is in other people.

Jenny likes hearing Sam’s stories about college, it sounds like Sam’s having fun, but thinking about it is a little bit sad too. Jenny won’t go to college like that. Playing in the OHL means she isn’t an amateur anymore, and can’t play in the NCAA. Jenny isn’t sure where she’s going after the OHL, but she won’t be able to follow Sam to school.

She’s been thinking about it a lot. The surest bet is the CWHL. It should still exist a few years down the line. Hopefully. Jenny wishes she could believe this with more confidence.

Maybe Jenny will get to play with Sam again in the CWHL. There are only a handful of teams, it wouldn't be that hard to pull it off. They could live together, and play together, on a team full of other women.

Or there's the other things, the ones Jenny doesn't let herself think about too much. The Leafs want to sign her to an AHL deal. They can't, not until she's twenty, but they’ve tried to talk to her agent. Jenny could play for the Marlies in a couple years, and if that works out, maybe then...

The AHL is a developmental league, to prepare players for the NHL, and maybe, if she signed a contract with the Marlies, and proved that she could play at that level, maybe she'd get a shot at the NHL. Maybe.

The Leafs say they want to sign her, but who knows if they want her to play. She's a hometown kid, and it would be a good story. They don't need to work to make people pay attention to them, they're _the Toronto Maple Leafs_ , but this could just be a publicity schtick. She doesn't trust it.

Maybe, in a few years, when she's twenty, playing with the Marlies will seem like her best bet. But right now it’s just adding to the muddled future.

"What are you thinking about, space case?" Sam asks, still taking pins out of her hair.

"The draft," Jenny says.

"Oh." Sam moves closer, wraps her arms around Jenny's middle. "This year's, or next year’s?" 

"Next year’s." This year's draft is coming up fast, and Jenny does care about what happens. She has friends in this draft, and she's interested in seeing where they wind up, but next year's draft might be _her_ draft, if anyone thinks that maybe a girl could make it in the NHL, enough to bet that she would be a better choice than whatever boy they could pick in her place.

There's still a debate about whether or not she'll be draft eligible, but that's not what Jenny's worried about. There's nothing she can do about the rules, she'll leave that to other people. She worries about whether anyone will _want_ to draft her. 

It’s so stupid. She shouldn’t worry. All she can do is play her best hockey, which is all she wants to do. Everything else is out of her hands. She shouldn’t even think about it.

Sam doesn't say anything at first, she just holds Jenny closer. It's a little bit awkward, because Jenny's so much taller, but Sam is holding her tight, not letting go. Jenny pays attention and doesn’t let herself get distracted by how nice it feels to have Sam’s arms around her.

Sam says all the right things. She says she believes in Jenny. She says she knows how hard Jenny works. She says Jenny deserves this. She calls Jenny exceptional. It doesn't make her feel any better.

Then Sam says something that isn't as nice, but is twice as true. "Or maybe not. Maybe you're nothing special, maybe you’re just good, nothing else. Maybe it's just time. There should be women playing in the NHL, which means there will have to be a first woman to get drafted, and it might as well be you." 

Looking at it like that makes Jenny so much smaller. It doesn’t make her special, it makes her one tiny piece in the slow steady march of progress.

“Yeah,” Jenny says, leaning back against Sam. Sam’s smaller, but she’s strong. “I guess it might as well be.”

“Yeah. You can make it happen for all the rest of us,” Sam says.

Jenny just wants to play hockey. She doesn’t want to be the first anything. She doesn’t want people to pay attention to her because she’s a girl. She wants them to pay attention to her for _playing hockey._ All she wants to do is play hockey.

But the way the rules are now isn’t fair. Someone has to change that. And it might as well be her? 

It seems like no one else is going to do it first, she at least has to try. Then later on, other girls will get to _just play hockey_ and not get asked questions about what it’s like to change surrounded by boys, or teased for saying they want to win the Stanley Cup when they grow up.

If Jenny worries about this enough then she won’t think about how she could push Sam against the counter and kiss her hard.

Jenny’s never kissed a girl before.

She’s never kissed anyone seriously, outside the context of parties and peer pressure. She’s been too busy being an exceptional hockey player.

Jenny isn’t sure she likes what it says about her that she’s less frightened to think about the immense uncertainty of her future career than she is to think about what might happen if she kisses Sam. Maybe Sam will kiss her first, and then all Jenny will have to do is kiss back. She could probably manage that.

The future’s scary. Somewhere out there, eventually, there’s going to be something Jenny won’t have the skills to handle. She isn’t looking forward to that day. But today, tonight, she can wait for Sam to get ready for bed, then they can head downstairs and watch movies until they fall asleep on top of each other on the couch. In the morning all her questions and worries will be there waiting, but tonight she can take comfort in some certainty — Sam’s her best friend, and that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> the Leafs really did want to sign Tavares out of the OHL before he was drafted. The Leafs are fucking bonkers.


End file.
